BOOKS OF THE TIMES: Review

She found herself, as young reviewers often are, assigned a great many novels, few of them offering much scope for brilliant comment. When she did have something worth getting to grips with - Henry James's ''Golden Bowl,'' no less - her review was subjected to some cruel editorial cuts (Mr. [Andrew McNeillie] reprints the very full and conscientious notes she had made while working on it), though she still had enough space to complain, along with her words of praise, that ''Mr. James tortures himself and wearies his readers in his strenuous effort to get everything said that there is to say.'' The only other novels she reviewed that are still remembered today were ''The House of Mirth'' and ''A Room With a View.'' On the Edith Wharton she was no more than adequate, on the Forster rather cool. (By the end of the story, she reports, ''the view is smaller than we expected.'') But she is not really a writer you go to for brisk clear-cut verdicts. She is at her best when she can let her thoughts play around a subject or wind her way into it. If she had gone on to write more conventional novels, the clearest evidence would no doubt be her growing ability to evoke character in the robust traditional sense. Some of the essays are splendid portraits in miniature - the sketch of the indomitable 18th-century bluestocking Elizabeth Carter, for instance. But a few go further, exploring the mysteries and half-lights of the inner life in a way that foreshadows ''Mrs. Dalloway'' and ''To the Lighthouse.'' The most striking example is an extraordinary fiery essay on the memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt.